This blog documents the preservation of the Brookwood Phone Box.
The kiosk was decommissioned by British Telecom in early 2009, and acquired by the local council to be preserved for the village.
A small team of villagers set about restoring the phone box, and then preserving it for future generations.
You may contact the author at contact@brookwood-expo.org.uk if you would like advice on restoring your kiosk.

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Saturday, 6 February 2010

It'll get worse before it gets better...

We start with the most unfortunate news that we suffered a small vandal attack Friday night. The local Village Idiot and his or her friends decided to remove the post that had rotted through. Unwittingly, they did us a favour, as our hand has now been forced and we'll have to do a proper job and redo the posts and railings. What we could not have done with, is the post then being used to damage a residents car; I shall report this to PCSO Naz on Monday. The intention now with the railings will be to totally remove them, make new posts and then eventually put the posts and railings back.

Our plan today was to remove the door so that we could strip the hard to reach sections of paint around the door frame. We also wanted to complete stripping the paint from the two sides we had started, and red oxide them for protection.

The attached picture shows the kiosk with the door removed, this was easier than we expected, and only one screw caused us any problems.

We then worked on removing as much paint as possible, but decided early on that we wouldn't quite finish the door side, so we decided to ensure we had protected the wood with decent exterior wood primer, and red oxide as much as possible.

I also wanted to know how well the four Telephone signs in the top of the kiosk could be expected to clean up. So, some time was spent working on one of those. We needed to do this, as these are puttied in, and we really didn't want to replace them unless absolutely necessary. These will clean up fine thankfully.

After several hours, we had primed the wood on the door, and painted the red oxide on most of the exposed metal. Finally we rehung the door. For this we used new hinges purchased from Unicorn, as the old ones had perished and had caused the door to slip, and jam when being closed. The attached picture shows Alan putting in the last of the screws. Again, this was easier than expected, with only a little bit of jostling with the door to get it in place.

After almost five hours, we left the kiosk in the state shown below:

We will remove the masking tape today before it gums up to the point where we can't remove it. This week, we intend on finishing priming the door side, and fitting the locking mechanism.